THE IMPORTANCE OF IMPERFECTION - Short Story 2 (Short Stories for Artists, Poets and those who Wander)

Many years ago, I was disappointed with where I was as a painter, it seemed I was going nowhere, horrible days lay ahead. I decided to give up painting altogether and do something like hiking. It was an incredible experience but most people said I was half mad to do such a thing. Unfortunately people take a dull view of hiking in my country and during those troubled times hiking seemed a risky thing to do. So I gave up hiking as a pleasant but unattainable past time. I wondered what I could do. I wondered whether there was some theory that when applied would lead to interesting paintings. So I decided to analyze the paintings of famous artists to try to find a clue to develop my theory. For many months I tried without luck, but one day I found the paintings of Vincent van Gogh.

Van Gogh seems to have been and oddity almost from the beginning. Childhood photos show him staring blankly at a distance. As a child he was serious, quiet and thoughtful. After working unsuccessfully as an art dealer he became a missionary and drifted into solitude and ill health. Perhaps in desperation he took up painting at the somewhat mature age of 27. Not only did he suffer from mental illness and poverty but he often neglected his physical health, did not eat properly and drank heavily. But what he created over the next ten years is astounding, 2100 art works including 860 paintings, which were so good that he became one of the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art.

But what struck me was that most of his paintings had an element of roughness even crudeness. Take Vincent van Gogh’s “The Church at Auvers” for example, the whole building is crooked and the colors unnatural. But what would have happened if he painted it straight using natural colors, then it would be like a million other architectural drawings, competent but boring. I felt that the real secret behind a really good painting was a certain ugliness mingled cleverly with a really impressive element. The impressive element makes the painting realistic while the crudeness energizes the painting making the whole painting interesting. This was good news for me because I am one of those people in this world who is too lazy or too incompetent to draw buildings perfectly.

I do not know if my theory is correct but I used this theory to paint and came up with some interesting paintings. Of course not everyone was impressed some people called some of my paintings crude and some called them ugly outright. But the important thing was for the first time in many years I felt like painting again. When Vincent van Gogh wrote "Art is to console those who are broken by life" maybe he was writing about me.